


The Stains of Red

by AgentCoop, Myka



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Character Death, Cutting, Goretober 2019, M/M, Suicide, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 08:43:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20945528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentCoop/pseuds/AgentCoop, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myka/pseuds/Myka
Summary: Everyone always asks Eiji.What do you want? What do you want? What do you want?And Eiji only has one answer.I want to be with Ash.





	The Stains of Red

**Author's Note:**

> Goretober Day 7: Self-Harm, Suicide
> 
> READ THE TAGS. TRIGGER WARNING. 
> 
> Consider yourself warned.

* * *

The faucet sink dribbles a few, last drops after Eiji turns it off. His fingers squeeze against the porcelain as if trying to leave some sort of indentation, even though that would be impossible.

Another day. Another day.

He stares at himself. At his growing hair that almost reaches his shoulders.

At his body that can no longer fly.

The phone rings. Eiji hurries to the kitchen and picks up the receiver from the wall.

“Hello?”

“Eiji-kun?”

Eiji sighs, and pulls the stool closer so he can sit. “Hi, Okasan.”

“Is it too late to call?”

“No. It’s only eight p.m. here. Are you just getting up?”

“Yes. You’re sister just left for school.”

“Ok…” Eiji bites his lip. It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk to his mother, it’s just that every time she calls she— 

“When are you coming back to Japan, Eiji?”

And there it is. He swallows a sigh before answering, “I don’t know.”

“I spoke with Ibe-san you know.”

Eiji stands up, suddenly alert. 

“He told me about the American boy. He told me about Ash.”

His fingers are starting to shake, and his heart is pattering frantically against his chest. Ash_._ _Ash. _He can’t even think of that name without his body having a visceral reaction. “Don’t—” Eiji tries, but his mother keeps going.

“Ibe told me you stayed in New York because of this dead boy. That’s he’s been dead for two years.”

“I...he...” Eiji’s head starts to pound, and he’s completely voiceless. He doesn’t know what to say.

“What is wrong with you, Eiji? Moving to another country is not normal. And for this? This boy? Ibe tells me that he is violent. That he is a criminal.”

_ Was _...Eiji thinks, and suddenly he wants to throw up.

“He probably got what was coming to him—”

“Stop!” Eiji hears ringing in his ears. “You don't know what I went through…”

“I know my son got shot in that dangerous place and now he lives there without reason. I’m trying to be kind Eiji. I’m trying to be understanding, but after Ibe-san told me everything I am so disappointed in you. You need to be home.”

“You think this is understanding?” Eiji’s breath shakes. “Is this why you called me? To berate me? I never told you because you wouldn’t understand.”

“How can I understand when my son disappears for two years and barely calls?”

“Mom… let’s do this some other day please.” Eiji rests his head on the wall. Sweat drips down his forehead smearing the pastel wallpaper. “Please.”

“No. It’s been more than two years, Eiji. It is not normal. What you’re doing is not normal—”

“I know I’m not normal!” Eiji suddenly screams. There’s silence on the line as his mother goes quiet. “I...” his momentary anger is gone, and now it’s just sadness. Horrible, debilitating sadness.

“Eiji…” His mother’s words are whispered. “Did you have sex with this boy?”

Eiji feels something snap. “Is that all you can think about?” He asks. It’s always him who is wrong. He was wrong for staying with Ash. He was wrong for being too weak and putting Ash in danger. He was wrong in leaving and letting Ash die. He was wrong for not moving on. He was wrong for staying. “I never had sex with him.”

He can hear his mother breathe a sigh of relief.

Eiji grits his teeth. “But I wish every day that I had. I loved him so much, Mama. I loved him with all my heart, and I was never his, and he was never mine. He was dying while I was on the plane home to Japan. He was dead when I landed and everyday I am reminded he would still be alive if I hadn’t left. If I had just gone to see him…”

“Eiji stop. I don’t want to hear this.”

The bitter feeling grows. “Why? I thought Ibe-san told you everything. Don’t you want to hear about your son being in love with a dead American boy?”

The silence stretches for a little while. The only reason Eiji doesn’t hang up is because he can hear his mother’s breathing, harsh and steady.

“Just come back to Japan,” she finally says. “We can help you. Find you a nice wife—”

Eiji hangs up. He slams the receiver five times before unhooking it and letting it dangle off the wall.

“I hate you.” He doesn’t know who he’s speaking too. His mother? Ibe? Maybe himself. Eiji steps inside the kitchen and opens the corner drawer. Pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lights one. _ Puff _ . It’s a momentary reprieve. A second of calm before the conversation with his mother repeats in his head. _ It is not normal_. _ It is not normal_. He hears her voice over and over and the cigarette is shaking between his fingers. “I hate everything.”

There’s a small note stuck to the fridge with a banana magnet.

“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.”

Eiji doesn’t even remember who gave it to him. Max? Alex? Cain? It didn’t matter. It was a random bible verse someone had fished out, meant to comfort him. It was supposed to help him, and Eiji has left it there out of respect, but in truth he hates it. It only serves to remind him of the time when Ash told him he didn’t believe in God. Because what kind of God would have given him the life he got. Raped and prostituted since he was a child. A gangster. A murderer. Only to kill him when he had finally managed to escape it all.

God was an asshole and Eiji hates him too.

He tears the note and throws it in the garbage bin. Picks up the dangling receiver and it rings the second he hangs it up.

Eiji bites his lower lip. “Hello?”

“Eiji! You’re home! Great!”

Sing. Eiji closes his eyes, and brings the cigarette back to his lips.

“I got some leftovers and was wondering if I could drop them off for you—”

“Is this your excuse to come over?” Eiji snaps angrily. “I told you a hundred times I don’t need your pity.”

“What— No. It’s not pity, Eiji. It’s—”

“Guilt?” Eiji bites out.

Silence.

Eiji feels the urge to hang up again. He’s exhausted, and there is a fiery anger that’s burning within him. Things that he bottled up for too long have festered inside of him and he’s just so tired of everything.

And he wants it to stop.

He wants to stop.

“So can I come over?” 

Eiji laughs bitterly, caustic anger churning within him at the way that Sing just ignored the question. “Why didn't you tell Lao the fight was cancelled?”

“What…”

“Did you hate Ash so much you wanted him dead? Did you hate me too? Did you want this?”

“Eiji what? You’re not making sense.”

Eiji takes a deep breath. “I don't want your pity, or your food.” He grips the receiver tight. “I don't need it anymore.” He hangs up and unhooks it again, letting it dangle for good this time.

Stumbling into the kitchen, he puts out the cigarette in the ashtray that sits next to the stove, then his eyes fall on the knife block.

His fingers wrap around a handle.

The knife is heavy in his hand, and feels strange. Otherworldly. How many times he held this? Cooked with this? But this time is different.

This time he...

A quiver of anticipation travels through his spine and he shivers, eerily excited. He can’t remember the last time he’d looked forward to something.

It’s as though his entire being has been in stasis for these two years, waiting for something, waiting for a moment, a breath, or just the barest whisper of breeze. And it’s here. He doesn’t need to move on, he doesn’t need to let go.

_ Eiji stop… _

The phone starts beeping from being unhooked.

No one will be able to call him. No one will be able to stop him.

All these people around him. Always always around him. Telling him how to feel. Telling him what to do.

_ Go back to Japan. _

_ You need to forget. _

Lingering voices echo and echo in his thoughts.

Everyone always asking him. _ What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? _

And Eiji only has one answer.

_ I want to be with Ash. _

Eiji closes the bathroom door behind him, locking it out of habit rather than any sort of reason. He places the knife on the sink for a second and pulls his t-shirt off, over his head, studying his body for a moment.

There’s still a ripple of muscle there, though the toned lines of it have faded over the last couple of years. Mostly, it’s just bare skin, the round of his hips poking out just above his jeans, the curve of his navel familiar and boring.

And the scar.

Eiji lets his fingers linger over it for a minute. A month ago he found Ash’s autopsy report hidden away in Max’s files. _ Lower right perforation_, it read, clinical and cold. 

“Lower right perforation.” Eiji mumbles and traces the scar down to the waistband of his jeans, then flickering up to graze the bottom of his ribs.

Sometimes at night, he closes his eyes and does this, the smooth pads of his fingertips gliding along his skin, down further, brushing against the fine hairs of his groin. 

Sometimes he imagines Ash’s voice, calling his name. Smiling. 

Living.

Eiji blinks, then pushes a finger against the scar, right underneath his ribcage, the skin reminding him of the old wound. It still hurts if he presses it hard enough.

_ There. A matching spot. _ His mind whispers. Ash pressed his hands right there. Ash leaned forward on the table of the library. Ash gripped Eiji’s letter, closed his eyes and died.

_ Right there. _

He grits his teeth, grips the blade between both hands, raises it high, and then swings downward.

Nothing happens.

Eiji shakes with nervousness. The tip of the knife has barely grazed his scar. His arms are quivering, his fingers are so tight they feel as though they might break. 

And then he’s suddenly filled with an irrational fury, so hot he burns with it.

He can’t even do this right. One sharp push is all he needs to share the intimate knowledge of Ash’s last moments and he just can’t do it. 

Eiji wants to scream with frustration. 

He takes a deep breath, holds the knife against his belly this time, then forces it forward.

Eiji screams, barely cutting through the first layer of skin. He can see a bead of blood rise up around the blade. It takes a moment, and then it bursts free, trickling down the scar tissue that’s already there.

But it’s not enough.

Angry tears spill down his cheeks.

He’ll never know what Ash felt.

Why can’t he do it? Why can’t he just force the blade into his stomach and wait? Why is he still afraid? Still terrified?

That is not acceptable.

He wants to be with Ash.

He chooses to die. He chooses to die on this day, he chooses_ this. _

The figure in the mirror is staring at him, gawking at him, looking weak and pathetic and Eiji with the little trickles of blood spilling down his stomach. Eiji hates him more than he hates anyone else, he wants him gone, he wants him to die, to die, to die— 

Eiji yells and before he realizes what’s happening, he slashes the knife hard against his wrist slicing down his forearm and pushing it into the skin. A gaping wound opens, and he watches the blood spurt across the bathroom floor.

He repeats. Three times, then four. His fingers are shaking madly as he switches hands and goes at the other arm, managing two long cuts and a shorter one before the knife falls from his wavering grip, slippery with his own blood.

Red.

Red.

Everything is stained red.

He’s seen blood before. He’s seen gunshot wounds, knife wounds. Violence. He’s seen men die.

But now that it’s his own blood, it’s striking to him how vivid it looks against the clean white of the tiles. There’s red on the mirror, on the sink, dripping down his jeans unto his feet, even his crumpled t-shirt on the floor is covered with it.

He’s going to die.

The anger fizzles, abates, drips away like his blood. Eiji laughs, the room spinning for a moment, and he feels...

The wounds themselves are sickening to look at. He swallows a few times, his breathing ragged and short, fighting the nausea that is sudden and roiling within his stomach. He can see flesh peeling away, it’s thick and fatty. He cut so deep that he can almost imagine the skin sloughing off from the bone.

But the beauty is in the blood. It still pumps from the sliced lines with every beat of his heart, so dark it’s almost black, but when it splatters against the floor, when it thins out, it’s just a vivid red, like the color of a child’s paint.

He finds himself watching, completely astounded by the way the human body continues to fight. The blood is leaving, but he can still breathe, he doesn’t feel any different yet, only the small flicker of hope that he has finally been brave enough to leave.

The numbness fades suddenly, quickly replaced by a jagged, agonizing pain. Eiji blinks as his vision swims, as his reflection seems to flicker in and out of the mirror.

The violent splatter of blood against the glass is already drying.

Such a messy death. 

Pain burts from his arms. The rush from his actions gone.

Such a painful death.

Eiji wavers and holds himself up on the sink, watching the blood drip down the drain.

What horrible thoughts would cross the mind of the person that found him. Would they blame themselves? Would they feel guilt and hate like Eiji has all these years?

He wants it that way, he wants them to know and— 

The floor is so red...

Eiji swallows around the growing bulge in his throat as he grips at the sink. It takes him three tries to get the faucet on, three tries to hear the burst of water against the shiny white porcelain. The water quickly turns pink as it washes down the drain, pulling spatters of his blood from the edges of the sink.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

He raises one arm in front of his face, the blood is almost sluggish now—no longer an arterial spray—it started to clot, pulses out slowly, almost steady enough that he can imagine he is seeing his heartbeat.

Eiji sticks his arm under the running water, gasping in pain as the wounds are kept open, and the red continues.

Ash had never been afraid of death. He’d run parallel to it his entire life. Unflinching, unwavering, pure beauty and confidence. 

But Ash had also told Eiji that he didn’t want to die.

_ My soul is always with you. _

“You’re such a liar, Ash.”

Eiji reaches out with his other hand to turn the faucet off, and pauses, watching the blood drip down his fingers, splattering against the sink.

Ash gave up.

He didn’t try.

“You liar. You _ liar_.”

And that cuts sharper than any knife Eiji can use, it burns within him every day. The pain of it wakes him at night, and he throws himself up, gasping for air, the taste of Ash’s name on his lips.

It blankets him with despair every second of every day, paralyzing him from everything, from moving, from breathing, from _ being_.

And now that Eiji’s entire life is flashing before his eyes, he’s finally free. With every breath comes a memory of betrayal, with every exhalation comes the horrible sadness of it all, the desperate desire for an end.

He can feel his heartbeat now. 

He can feel it in his wrists, in his arms, in his neck, in his mouth.

And with every slowing beat, he is closer, closer, closer— 

“Eiji!”

Eiji’s eyes flutter open, and he realizes that he’s slumped over the sink, blood drying and sticky against his chest. He is so cold, he is so tired— 

“Eiji!”

There’s pounding on the door, and yelling, and it all sounds so fuzzy, it all sounds so far away…

“Eiji! Eiji, open the door!”

It’s Sing.

It’s always Sing.

A small flare of anger resurfaces, deep within his chest, almost hot enough to cut through the haze, but not quite enough for Eiji to care. “Mmmm...” he tries.

Opening his mouth is harder than he expected. His tongue is heavy and listless, his mouth is swollen and cottony. He’s so thirsty. “Mmm fine,” he manages.

Another wave of dizziness hits and he tumbles down, hitting his head on the sink, and landing awkwardly against the side of the tub.

“Oh my god, Eiji, I’m coming in!”

“No,” Eiji tries, but he’s not actually sure that he makes any noise at all.

The door bursts open, and then Sing is there, tall, and handsome, and so, so young.

“...fine,” Eiji repeats.

“Oh fuck. Oh fuck, oh fuck, Eiji—”

“...’mm fine—” it seems the only word he knows. Sing is on his knees now though, grabbing at Eiji’s head, pulling him forward, pushing his hands against Eiji’s arms.

“Oh fuck, I need to call...oh fuck, Eiji! Eiji, can you hear me? Eiji please, oh my god—”

“Fuck you,” Eiji pushes past numb lips. Sing is all over him, trying to save him. And it’s horrible. It’s wrong. He wants to die, he wants to be nothing, and he hates Sing so much.

He hates Sing.

_ He hates Sing! _

He tries to push at the teenager, but nothing happens. There is another wash of pain, and Eiji moans with it, nausea rising as Sing keeps pressing against the cuts on his arms. “Stop,” he groans, thrashing his head back from side to side.

“Eiji, please. Please, hold on. I gotta call someone. Here, hold this, okay? Hold your arms like this tight against your chest _ please_.”

It hurts, but Eiji looks down to see that Sing has pulled off his own t-shirt and has pushed it in between Eiji’s forearms. It is so clean, and so white, that Eiji finds himself just staring for a moment. 

Until Sing was gone.

Then Eiji rips his arms apart, The blood is clotting again, but it is still slowly trickling down his pale flesh.

_ Please be enough. _

_ Please be enough. _

It had to be enough.

He’s cold.

He’s freezing. 

Eiji blinks, sluggish eyelids raising, and Sing is there again, in his face, frantic.

“Fuck, Eiji, fuck! Put your arms together. Come on, I just gotta stop the bleeding, they’re coming, the ambulance is coming—”

“Fuck you,” Eiji says. He struggles to hold his arms apart, but it’s getting harder and harder. “Fuck you. I just wanna see him. I wanna be with him. I just wanna…”

“Oh god, Eiji,” Sing moans. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He’s crying.

Sing is crying.

Eiji tries to reach a hand out, but it falls against his chest, heavy and limp. “...s’ okay,” he murmurs. “Just need to see Ash.”

“Eiji, come on. I can hear sirens, they’re almost here, come on, please—”

“Ash...”

“Ash...”

He’s not sure what he expects. A bright, white light? Memories washing over him? Warmth and maybe just maybe a voice calling his name?

But it’s not like that.

He’s so cold, and he can’t stop shaking. There’s darkness all around, pressing in on him, suffocating him. And somewhere, far away, Sing begins to scream.

**Author's Note:**

> Find us on Twitter:  
[Agentcoop](twitter.com/agentcoop1)  
[Myka](https://twitter.com/mykafl)


End file.
